Solution Partner prices have shot up sky-high

I live in Italy and have a full time job as a DOT.NET consultant for a services company. The customers vary as clearly do the projects. Recently I have developed 3 ecommerce sites. Not knowing php my obvious choice was to download nopCommerce and customize it.

Programmers like myself that work for a services company have the benefit of having a minimum wage guaranteed, pension and taxes automatically payed for and none of the hassles of having to search for a customer that will actually pay. The negative aspect of working for someone else is that the wages are clearly much lower than you would get if you were able to find customers on your own.

This got me interested in becoming a NopCommerce solution partner, initially not giving up my "safe" job but taking on small projects in my free time to test the market because at the moment I have no idea of exactly how popular NopCommerce is compared to its php competitors which do unfortunately appear to have a much stronger market share.

Up until recently the silver partner cost was 200$ and the gold partner 2700$. The prices have however drastically shot up to 700$ and 5000$. This is a huge increase especially considering silver partnership doesn't give you sales leads, it is just a link in a page!

I would like to ask other NopCommerce freelancers:

a) typically how many requests do you get a year from being a silver solution partner and what sort of hourly rates?
b) do these requests come from end customers or, as I strongly suspect, do almost all of the requests come from IT companies that get the work but don't have anyone internally with the right skills?
c) is the main benefit of siver partnership extra work or the discounted copyright removal?
d) is the new work coming in on 3.9 or 4.0?  
e) is it worth taking the certification exam (luckily still only 100$)? I think this may a cheaper and more effective way forward. I would need to invest several weeks of my free time to gain a 360° understanding of the product, because at the moment I have concentrated entirely on customizing the source code and the database. I've been working with SQL Server for decades so always learn a new product "database up"!  

Thanks Daniela

Hello Daniela!

We are redesigning our partnership program, some documents are under construction. We will introduce a new level of partnership which will cost $250, stay tuned till March the 5th.
Yes, the prices grew up the first time since 2012. But the popularity of the platform and nopCommerce market share also risen, so did the Solution partners page views.

nopCommerce partnership draws more clients and reduces your development expenses:

●    Partners are featured on Solution Partner directory, which draws more clients to them.The Solution partners directory gets 50,000+ pageviews per year.
●    Official partners always have more credibility among potential customers and get big-budget projects more often.
●   Partners take part in high-budget projects and stand out from your competitors.
●    Partners enjoy massive discounts on nopCommerece services and copyright removal keys, enabling them to reduce their costs and earn more


Moreover, Gold Partners enjoy access to sales leads, have a higher position on Partners directory, bigger discounts and free premium support.


e) is it worth taking the certification exam?

Yes, learning the platform it is definitely the best way to start working on it.  Those, who have certification are listed in certified developers directory and are preferred to be hired as freelancers. Also, a certified specialist is highly sought by nopCommerce Gold Partners, which will give you huge pluses as a developer.

Hello VML,

I have seen the new base level $250 "registered" solution partner rate.

I am writing to ask you:

1) For partnership you require to have built at least 1 site.
I've built 3 (1 highly customized) but none for myself, all for my current employer a services company. Can I quote them to you confidentially but nowhere online?  

2) Does Nop 4.0 run on Unix? Is there demand for hosting on Linux?

3) Do you think as an ASP.NET developer it would more profitable if I partnered up with a small low cost Unix based IT company offering systems engineering & hosting? Would the synergy pay off having to divide the revenue? The advantage is that ogether we could offer a complete end-to-end package (installation + hosting + customization + integration to ERP ecc) of open source/free software including NopCommerce and Umbraco.

4) I've downloaded a pdf which lists the individual areas tested in the certification exam. Is the only reference material your online documentation and reading posts in this forum? The guy Andrei in your team, WOW does he know his stuff! I find reading his replies a good learning source, but I was hoping for more direct exam preparation material and possibly mock-ups.

Thanks Daniela

Hi Daniela,

1. Sure. You can submit website so they are visible only to our team

2. No. But we'll support Unix in one of the next version (when moved to .NET Core)

3. Sure. Why not? But please see the previous answer

4. Thanks a lot =))) The best way to go is implement a couple of sites, make some customization. You can also check our documentation. It's more than enough to pass the exam

DanielaM wrote:
We are e-commerce developers (13 people in our company)  fully focused in Nop and have developed over 80 sites and are silver partners:
a) Not many but very good leads. We got our best client (Project over US $100 K). Hourly rate depends of the country India may charge US $25 while Australia over US $100.
b) Both, including some Nop developers who want help for big projects.
c) Both. If you develop 6+ sites per year the 50% discount ($125 x 6) for the Silver partnership pays for the partnership
d) We always try to implement new projects  in the latest version. The client normally does'n't get into these details
e) It is not that easy. Our developers who have done dozens of Nop sites with heavy customization and with more than 7 years of experience have failed twice 1% or 2% below of required minimum :(

We not only develop e-commerce sites but provide hosting, maintenance and support for them which 1) gives you a base stable monthly income and 2) brings you new business from them for upgrading (normally every 2 to 3 years) and further customization work

Thanks everyone. A base income working from home is exactly what I am looking for.
I don't have a single customer at the moment. I have a full time job as an IT developer and my dream is to quit it and work for myself.
About 1 month ago I filled out an Upwork profile to try to find one or two initial customers. I was fully aware that those sort of sites pay you next to nothing but was hoping that using them for a short time would lead to finding work outside of their circuit. After submitting my profile on Upwork I received an automated email saying they were no longer accepting programmers with my skills.
So I joined Twago instead and this time I was immediately accepted. I searched for eCommerce projects and spent a couple of hours preparing three detailed bids. I didn't receive a single offer, in fact there was no feedback at all.
So my next attempt was to try to think of companies that offer niche products that aren't sold on Amazon or Ebay that also do not have an eCommerce site. I could only think of two cases. I prepared a professional letter and contacted them explaining the growing benefits of selling their products online, asking to meet them to further discuss the business opportunity. I received a polite refusal.
I started thinking about using NopCommerce to set up my own business not only as a programmer but as the end customer. I live in an apartment, I don't have a warehouse, I don't wan't to spend time putting products in boxes and having to ship them. So I'd need to sell a service. Short term rentals like AirBnb are a great lucrative service and Nop could be adapted to build a similar platform. Many people have attempted to build similar sites, I think the problem isn't how to build the platform but the huge legal aspects. Online dating ecommerce portals would be great but there are too many and some are free. Hotel bookings in restricted areas, printing photos and posters or real estate without agents. I have several remaining potential ideas but have realized that my best bet for now is to find one or two "end customers" that give me their ecommerce site to implement, heavily customize and maintain. I am planning a minimum investment, basically to look at the web sites in the Nop solution partner page and to build something similar, pay for membership and see if it leads to something useful.
As for the exam, I've only worked with Nop for about 2 months, it's going to be a long time before I can hope to pass it. It requires a very thorough knowledge which I do not have. Unfortunately since completing the 3 nop sites last year, I ahve been allocated on completely different projects.

When you buy a car, you pretty much pay for what you get. In the IT industry, the price of software or professionals is not proportional to the quality.  The reason I think NopCommerce could be the answer to my prayers is because after years of having to customize badly designed solutions sold to customers (that have no understanding of software) at incredibly overrated prices, when I downloaded Nop I was amazed by how good it is, how much you get out of the box, how easy it is to customize and integrate and almost completely free!